turtledovefandomcom-20200216-history
Talk:Royal Navy
I'm all for taking the St Patrick's Cross of the bastard Sassenachs' banner but given that they were revanchist and considered Ireland theirs by rights I doubt they'd do so de jure, certainly not right away. Turtle Fan 15:51, 26 October 2008 (UTC) Well the United States was much more revanchist then Britain ever was, and they felt the CSA was rightfully theirs, yet they never placed stars in the Stars and Stripes for the "missing" Confederate States, at least not until they retook them in 1945.IC79 00:10, 27 October 2008 (UTC) ps- I wouldn't call the Union Jack a bastard banner, but that's just me :P IC79 00:24, 27 October 2008 (UTC) The Union Jack isn't a bastard but the people who fly it have had that streak in their day. But back to 191, the US pre-GWI was less revanchist than the UK post-GWI; they never elected a fascist government just to get their own back, and while they were eager for a fight they didn't fabricate reasons to expand the scope of their wars out of thin air. That's not what's important, though; what's important is that the US didn't remove the stars (a far more relevant comparison) for a number of years--right before HFR. Apply the same time frame to the Brits after their surrender in GWI and they wouldn't've taken the third cross out till the Tories/Silver Shirts were in, and those guys certainly would have done no such thing. Turtle Fan 02:18, 27 October 2008 (UTC) Every people have had a "streak in their day." Anyway, I would disagree with you about the U.S. going fascist. While not overtly undemocratic the Remembrance/Democrat dominated post-Second Mexican War U.S. definitely shared some qualities with fascism (though in modern terms it was more like they went emo, but that's neither here nor there). The Great War ended in such a way that it would seem removing St. Patrick's Cross from the Union Jack remains likely. The Central Powers forced peace upon the Allies, and from the text in AE:B&I it seems like Ireland was forced out of Britain's realm rather unceremoniously with Germany and the U.S. forcing the acceptance of Irish independence on the Brits as well. So it would seem like the Brits, who were forced to accept Irish independence, would remove the St. Patrick Cross from the Union Jack as a sign of it. Much like the C.S. removed two stars when they lost Kentucky and Sequoyah, and only added one star after the pro-C.S. vote won in the Kentucky plebiscite.IC79 17:33, 29 October 2008 (UTC) :Except that the CSA didn't do either of those things. Jelay14 21:28, 29 October 2008 (UTC) :The British streak was worse than most. :I don't know why you think the Remembrance crowd shared qualities with fascism, they didn't. They were very pro-democracy throughout the dark years, not least of all because they enjoyed wide popular support and democracy legitimized them. :If the Central Powers forced the British to give up Ireland, and they did not do so willingly--a read which seems correct--that makes it less likely that the Brits would alter their flag, not more, than would be the case if they had given up the island willingly. :Jelay is correct: The CS engaged in no such star removal as you've described. Turtle Fan 01:56, 30 October 2008 (UTC) ::As someone decended from Canadian Loyalists who risked their lives generation after generation for King and Country I'll respectively disagree about the British having a worse streak then others. The Germans, Americans, Soviets, Turks, Red Chinese, and Japanese all jump ahead if you ask me, but I'll refrain from further discussion on that subject. ::Remembrance was, if you ask me, the perfect union between democracy and fascism. Free and democratic republican government mixed with extreme nationalism, a vast military build-up, and strict regulation of society toward the needs and goals of the state. ::The CSA's star change falls into author intent, IMO. Both the C.S. and the U.S. seemed to share the tradition of matching the number of states to the number of stars on the flag. The U.S. removed stars (eventually) after the C.S. left, and added stars as it gained states between the SMW and the Great War, as well as after the Great War when it got Houston and Kentucky. So wouldn't it follow the C.S. would remove stars representing those states as well? Especially when you consider the Whig platform for the C.S. after the war was to not moan about lost territories, but to accept what happened and do what they could to get the country moving again. Plus this Wiki uses a 15 star flag for the C.S. under "Southern Victory." And while the recent image may be mine, it's just a cleaned up version of an identical image that was there before. ::As for Britain, I get the feeling that to "show the world it was ready to move on" the U.S. and Germany would have "strongly suggested" Britain remove references to Ireland from its flag in accordance with its recognition of Irish independence. There's nothing to support this in the text, but it's the feeling I got from author intent. Sort of like how the exact design of the Mexican flag is never spelled out in the text, but we all assume (and know in the end) that it's the gaudy banner Maximillian used. IC79 03:49, 31 October 2008 (UTC) :::The Nazis, Soviets, and CCP were nastier than anything ever to emanate from London but were only around for a couple of generations, and of the three only the Soviets were preceded by a regime that was anywhere near as bad as them. (Well the KMT which preceded the CCP were no dears but they were a flash in the pan themselves.) Ditto the uber-nationalist Japanese who were by the way a British creation. The Turks and Americans--well they have their shame, but both fall well short of the above. The Brits have all these people beat in terms of the length of time of their imperialism and the breadth of their empire. More people groaned under the British yoke than under the others, even if they didn't groan as loudly. And the Irish got it worse than most of their subjects. I should know--I lost many an ancestor to the king and country yours served. But that's neither here nor there. ;) :::Free and democratic government--the US was a free country at this time--does not preclude military buildup, nationalism, et cetera. You haven't suggested that it did but neither has what you've described sounded fascist. Actually it reminds me of nothing so much as Korea since the 1980s. And that's a charming country. Nothing remotely fascist about it. :::Author intent is a pretty elastic and questionable thing to try to hide developments in. He didn't mention the star thing ever, not once. Now that's not so unusual; he failed to mention all sorts of things. However, if such a development would have been beneath Turtledove's notice, it would not have been under Featherston's. Can you really imagine him giving the Whigs a free pass on something like that rather than railing against it from the highest mountain? :::As for the US, they eventually removed the stars . . . key word being eventually. The period of the story relative to this discussion saw things move much too quickly for anything to be eventual. :::I really don't think the Germans and Americans cared enough about the British flag to demand it be changed. And if they had the Brits would probably have told them to fuck off. No one in their right mind would risk going to war over something like that (well maybe the Cypriots, but they're hardly in their right minds). And the CP had much less influence over the British than they did over the French, who got away with changing their flag in a positive provocative direction as opposed to merely leaving well enough alone. :::We used to use author intent to toy around with all sorts of speculations here but now we try to discourage it, especially in TL-191. The reason is that there are so many holes in that story that if we try to fill them all in this wiki will give more coverage to our creative writing projects than it will to the man himself. Turtle Fan 01:18, 1 November 2008 (UTC)